Thursday, September 13, 2007

I thought I was going to LOVE Superbad. Puerile humour, geek gags - it's my thing. But to my surprise I found this teen gross-out comedy deeply deeply unfunny, implausible and occasionally offensive. The basic plot is that three high school students need to get their hands on some booze in order to impress and therefore score with hot chicks at a party. This is all fine - it's practically the staple of the teen comedy - geeks desperate to score. But what irked me was that none of the lead characters was remotely likeable in the way that John Hughes leads were always sympathetic. Michael Cera's Evan is weak-willed and ineffectual. Jonah Hill's Seth is just a selfish vulgarian: Cartman without the redeeming humour. Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Fogell has neither the comic timing nor the capacity to inspire sympathy in the way that Anthony Michael Hall's geeks always did. I don't particularly mind all the swearing either, except that it is to no effect. Seth wears a Richard Pryor T-shirt early on in the film and it just served to remind me how when Pryor swore it was because he was really really angry! Not just whining. I also found the menstrual blood gag to be plain unfunny and borderline offensive. So what can I say? I just don't understand the hype about this film.

SUPERBAD is on release in Canada, the USA and the UK. It opens in Australia, Portugal, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Israel and Iceland later in September. It opens in Germany, Russia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Brazil, Hungary, Singapore, Estonia, Spain, Belgium and France in October. It opens in the Netherlands, Finland, Turkey, Argentina and Norway in November.